On Frozen Blog

So universally positive was the reaction to the Caps’ signing of Mike Knuble yesterday that the Caps’ media relations staff excerpt-blogged a wide sampling of high-profile hockey personality reactions to it, and passed along the link to the media early Wednesday evening.

Who could blame them — no one saw the Knuble signing coming, and everyone loved it.

The media zeal for the signing was actually met and exceeded by hosanas sung on the official fan message boards on the team’s web site, if you can believe it. Once upon a time, the official message boards were a licensed toxic waste dump of the-sky-is-falling/kick-McPhee-to-the-curb histrionics: a whole ‘lotta heat, precious little light. Yesterday around 2:15 all was sweetness and light therein.

It’s funny what the signing of a single big banging scoring body can do for a fanbase still recovering from the postseason death by a thousand goals scored in tight by You Know Who, less than two months ago.

In April and May the Caps got banged around down low, a lot, and ultimately banged around and out of the postseason. On the first day of free agency 2009, George McPhee added some serious bang, and right-side lamp-lighting, to his 2010 lineup. From this vantage, more banging is still needed, on the back end, but let us revel in the sweet success of the first hours of the NHL’s free agency feeding frenzy.

There are many good reasons to be excited by the Knuble signing, but for me, foremost among them, is this: it’s a terrifically targeted, terrifically tactical acquisition — the anti-Rangers kind of behavior on July 1. It well addresses not just a roster position of conspicuous weakness and need but a dereliction of ethos up front — of grit and grunt-work. The Capitals in 2008-09 were their most infuriating when, bursting with world-class skill-driven arrogance, they became too cute with the puck in their opponents’ end, which occurred all too often. The signing of Mike Knuble is management’s surgical strike against the cute.

“I do the dirty work in the corners,” Knuble told Washington media Wednesday afternoon. “I don’t think anyone needs to tell me how to play.” Me . . . likey!

Wednesday’s outpouring of fan delirium is to some extent also the byproduct of relief that perhaps management learned a tough lesson from a lost opportunity this past spring. It was the Penguins, and not the Capitals, who parted with a middling draft pick to secure the battle-tested services of another able and exemplary right side force, Bill Guerin. What if it had been Guerin in a Caps’ rather than a Pens’ sweater in that game 7? We’ll never know. To some extent, the Wednesday signing said, rather conspicuously, mea culpa.

Additionally, fresh consternation among the fanbase was stirred when the GM had this to say to the Washington Post earlier this week:  

“On defense we’re fine [Emphasis OFB's]. Goaltending we’re fine. We have enough [forwards] internally, we believe, to be a good team, a playoff team.”

George McPhee was right — his Caps as comprised are fine . . . insomuch as fine is defined as winning a weak division, winning a playoff round each spring, and perhaps pushing an elite team to the brink of elimination. But “fine” in the summer of 2009 is no longer good enough. No one in Washington wants Alexander Ovechkin to be linked with the likes of Tony Gwynn or Jim Kelly.

But later on in his comments to the Post McPhee added this: “But if there’s something that makes us really good [Emphasis OFB's], we’ll be involved.”

And so on Wednesday they were, with a single roster move, in a big way. Call it Death to Cuteness, and a Bear hug hello to Brawny Banging.